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Theorthography of themodern Greek language was standardised in 1976^[1] and simplified the diacritics in 1982. There are relatively few differences between the orthography ofAncient Greek andModern Greek.

Some time prior to that, one early form of Greek,Mycenaean, was written inLinear B, although there was a lapse of several centuries (theGreek Dark Ages) between the time Mycenaean stopped being written and the time when the Greek alphabet came into use.

Early Greek writing in the Greek alphabet wasphonemic, different in eachdialect. Since the adoption of theIonic variant forAttic in 403 BC, however, Greek orthography has been largely conservative and historical.

Given thephonetic development of Greek, especially in theHellenistic period, certain modern vowel phonemes have multiple orthographic realizations:

• /i/ can be spelled η, ι, υ, ει, οι, or υι (seeIotacism);
• /e/ can be spelled either ε or αι;
• /o/ can be spelled either ο or ω.

This affects not only lexical items but also inflectional affixes, so correct orthography requires mastery offormal grammar,e.g.η καλή/ikaˈli/ 'the good one (fem.sing.)'vs.οι καλοί/ikaˈli/ 'the good ones (masc.pl.)';καλώ/kaˈlo/ 'I call'vs.καλό/kaˈlo/ 'good (neut.sing.)'.

Similarly, the orthography preserves ancient doubled consonants, though these are now pronounced the same as single consonants, except inCypriot Greek.

Examples

Notes

Adigraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters in sequence. The orthography of Greek includes several digraphs, including various pairs of vowel letters that used to be pronounced asdiphthongs but have been shortened tomonophthongs in pronunciation. Many of these are characteristic developments of modern Greek, but some were already present in Classical Greek. None of them is regarded as a letter of the alphabet.

During theByzantine period, it became customary to write thesilent iota in digraphs as aniota subscript.

According to KEME (1983),^[9] the splitting of a Modern Greek word into syllables (syllabification) is governed by the following rules:

• C1: A single consonant between two vowels is hyphenated with the succeeding vowel.
• C2: A sequence of two consonants between two vowels is hyphenated with the succeeding vowel, if a Greek word exists that begins with such a consonant sequence. Otherwise the sequence is split into two syllables.
• C3: A sequence of three or more consonants between two vowels is hyphenated with the succeeding vowel, if a Greek word exists that begins with the sequence of the first two consonants. Otherwise it splits; the first consonant being hyphenated with the preceding vowel.^[10]

Loanword hyphenation is governed by the same grammar rules as the rest of theStandard Modern Greek language.^[10]

The prohibitive hyphenation rules regarding vowel splitting are as follows:

• V1. Double-vowel blends do not split.
• V2. The combinations αυ, ευ, ηυ, αύ, εύ and ηύ^[11] do not split.
• V3. Diphthongs do not split.
• V4. Excessive diphthongs do not split.

All of the above rules are negative in that they indicate impermissible hyphen points within particular substrings of consecutive vowels.^[10]

Polytonicspelling uses a variety ofdiacritics to represent aspects of the pronunciation ofancient Greek. Polytonic, along withlowercase letters, became standard inByzantine Greek, although the ancient distinctions had disappeared, replaced by a simple stress accent. Theorthographies of modern Greek, bothkatharevousa anddhimotiki, used the polytonic system until 1982, when monotonic spelling was introduced. In some conservative contexts, such as theChurch, polytonic spellings are still used.

Monotonic orthography, adopted in 1982, replaces the ancient diacritics with just two: theacute accent (tónos, e.g.ί), used to mark the stressed syllable in polysyllabic words, and thediaeresis (dialytiká, e.g.ϊ), which indicates that the vowel is not part of a digraph.

Ancient Greek was written asscripta continua withoutspacing orinterpuncts. Over time, a variety of symbols appeared. A system of dots credited toAristophanes of Byzantium was developed in the 3rd century BC: alow dot⟨.⟩ marked an occasion for a short breath after a short phrase, amiddot⟨·⟩ marked an occasion for a longer breath after a longer passage, and ahigh dot⟨˙⟩ marked a full stop at the end of a completed thought. Other writers employedtwo dot punctuation⟨⁚⟩ to mark the ends of sentences or changing speakers. Less often, arrangements of three⟨⁝⟩, four⟨⁞ or ⁘⟩, and five dots⟨⁙⟩ appeared. Such interline punctuation could be noted or replaced by a variety ofparagraphoi, long marks which trailed between lines of text; these might also mark changes of speakers. Blank lines or variouscoronides marked the ends of sections. (A separatecoronis was used to markcontractions; its early forms looked like an apostrophe between the two elided words.) Over time, the main punctuation came to be afull stop marked by a single dot at varying heights, apartial stop marked by various forms ofcommas, and thehypodiastole⟨⸒⟩ andpapyrological hyphen⟨ ͜ ⟩. These served to show whether an ambiguous series of letters should be read as (respectively) a pair of words or as a single word.^[12] LaterAristarchus of Samothrace modified this system (see:Aristarchian symbols).

Following theadvent of printing, most Greek punctuation was gradually standardized withFrench: thehypodiastole was fully unified with the comma, thecomma serves as thedecimal point (and in this use is called thehypodiastole) and it also functions as asilent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishingό,τι (ó,ti, "whatever") fromότι (óti, "that").^[12] Thefull stop serves as thethousands separator, andguillemets (εισαγωγικάisagoyika) andem-lengthquotation dashes (παύλαpavla) typically serve to indicate direct speech.^[14] When quotations are nested, double apostrophes and turned commas are used for the embedded quotation or word: ⟨«…“…”…»⟩. Right-pointing double guillemets (ομειωματικάomiomatiká)⟨»⟩ serve as aditto mark. The principal difference is theGreek question mark⟨;⟩, which developed a shape so similar to theLatinatesemicolon⟨;⟩ thatUnicode decomposes its separate code point identically.^[12] Theano teleia middot serves as the Greek semicolon, but is so uncommon that it has often been left off of Greekkeyboards.^[13]

One of the few places whereano teleia exists is on the Microsoft Windows Polytonic Greek keyboard (having the driver name KBDHEPT.DLL).

Theexclamation mark (θαυμαστικόthavmastikó) is mostly used as in English. Thehyphen, thebrackets, thecolon, theellipsis and theslash are also in use. The slash has the additional function of forming common abbreviations likeα/φοί forαδελφοί 'brothers'. Theligaturekai (ϗ) is sometimes used for the same function as the Englishampersand.

There are special rules for how to writeGreek numerals. Inmodern Greek, a number of changes have been made. Instead of extending anoverline over an entire number (likeχξϛ), akeraia (κεραία,lit. "hornlike projection") is placed to its upper right, a development of the short marks formerly used for single numbers and fractions. The modernkeraia is a symbol (ʹ) similar to theacute accent (´), but has its ownUnicode character, encoded as U+0374.Alexander the Great's fatherPhilip II of Macedon is thus known asΦίλιππος Βʹ in modern Greek. A lower leftkeraia (Unicode: U+0375, "Greek Lower Numeral Sign") is now standard for identifying thousands: 2015 is represented as ͵ΒΙΕʹ (2000 + 10 + 5).

• Ancient Greek phonology
• Greek braille
• Obelism
• Greek grammar
• Greek language question
• Greek ligatures
• Iota subscript
• Katharevousa
• Modern Greek phonology
• Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching
• Romanization of Greek

• Holton, David; Mackridge, Peter; Philippaki-Warburton, Irini (1998).Grammatiki tis ellinikis glossas. Athens: Pataki.
• Keller, Andrew; Russell, Stephanie (2012).Learn to Read Greek, Part 1. New Haven, Connecticut and London, England: Yale University Press.ISBN 978-0-300-11589-5.
• Mastronarde, Donald J. (2013).Introduction to Attic Greek (2nd ed.). Berkeley, California, Los Angeles, California, and London, England: University of California Press.ISBN 978-0-520-27571-3.Archived from the original on 2024-10-07. Retrieved2020-11-11.
• Woodard, Roger D. (2008). "Attic Greek". In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.).The ancient languages of Europe. Cambridge: University Press. pp. 14–49.ISBN 9780521684958.

Look upAppendix:Greek punctuation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Greek Unicode Issues by Nick Nicholas
• The Details of Modern Greek Phonetics and Phonology, by Harry Foundalis

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